Chapter 39
Ayla
Ayla felt Raoul leaning on the kitchen counter in the Crystal Clear Safehouse before she even heard him, and that was saying something.
His silence, as usual, didn’t last long.
“And on today’s chapter of I Love Her But It’s A Secret, please welcome Ayla the Chef, in her noble duty of peeling onions instead of confessing her undying love to the woman she sleeps six inches away from.”
“Have I told you that you have more energy than most living beings?” she muttered.
“Often. I think the last time was…two days ago.”
“And yet your insistence has somehow increased since.”
“It’s so painful watching you two, honestly.”
“Do you have nothing else to do than creep around and follow your sister and me?”
“I creep around, and I hope you grow a pair of ovaries and tell her. Not the same.”
She sighed. “Cardinals take me.”
“More painful than dying, I swear on every Cardinal,” he muttered.
“Having you as a brother-in-law would be more painful than dying, that much I can promise.”
Raoul shot up as if he sprang from a bed. “Hel-fucking-lo? How exactly did we go from not telling Nina I love her to I want to marry her?”
For Cardinal’s sake.
If there was ever a moment when she missed rolling her eyes, it was now. Instead, she hurled an onion at him. It sailed straight through his non-corporeal chest and thudded onto the far tiles.
“Will you invite me to the wedding?”
“I won’t,” she growled.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be there anyway.”
A snort threatened, but she bit it back. “Don’t I fucking know that.”
Her knife cracked down through a new, fresh onion, cutting it in half before slicing it with methodical precision.
“That’s way too fast for the average person to chop onions,” Raoul warned. “Have I told you that handling sharp knives with no vision is dangerous?”
“Yes. Five hours ago, with the carrots.”
“Right. I stand by it.”
The kitchen door creaked, and Indianna padded in, yawning, clutching the coffee Ayla had set out. She collapsed into a chair.
“Glad I’m not the only one talking to myself,” Indianna said. “Sometimes I feel like a mad scientist.”
“You are a mad scientist.” Ayla side-smiled. “The mad scientist who will save our lives.”
Indianna chuckled, then sobered. “Speaking of. I’ve narrowed the cure down to two formulas.
One I’ll have ready in a couple of hours—though the last infusion needs to brew at a very precise temperature while it stabilizes.
If that fails, the other option has to sit longer until the dried petals melt with the ink, which is risky, considering the speed Nina’s hair is darkening every time she sleeps. ”
Ayla froze with her blade in the air. “Should she stay awake until the cure is ready?”
“That would be the best option,” Indianna admitted. “Not the healthiest. But safest.”
Before Ayla could reply, Nina’s voice drifted in, bright and warm, tangled in conversation with Stevian about the jasmine and orange trees on the back patio. Their footsteps approached, the air carrying her scent of white blossoms and icy mint clinging to her skin.
Nina’s presence softened the space, and Ayla felt like a tide rolling against her chest. It was now or never.
Onions abandoned on the chopping board, she ignored Raoul’s excited gasp and went straight to Nina, holding her hand mid-air, feeling Nina’s hair brushing her fingertips.
“I need you for a minute,” Ayla said.
“Sure,” Nina replied. Ayla heard her heartbeat increase as Nina followed her, still holding her hand, to the terrace facing Sweetgum Beech, on the opposite side of the patio in Ciaran’s safe apartment.
When Ayla closed the glass doors behind them, she joined Nina on a bench.
She inhaled deeply. “I know I should have said this earlier, but I couldn’t.”
“You don’t need to excuse yourself,” Nina said, holding Ayla’s hand with her own. “Whatever you said or didn’t say, it was for a reason.”
“It was,” Ayla admitted. “I trust you with every single inch of me. I know you would want to know, but…I didn’t want to worry you.”
She felt Nina nod slowly. “It’s your hand, isn’t it?”
The weight Ayla was carrying left her chest. “Always so clever, little dove.” She almost choked on her last two words, realizing she had never said them to her directly, and feeling the heat rush trailing up Nina’s neck up to her cheeks.
“When I touched the piece of heart in the North, it didn’t just stain me.
It’s her ink, her blackness linking me to her.
The Queen speaks to me, even if less often and less loudly than when she speaks to you. ”
Nina’s swallow was sharp in the quiet. “Hopefully, Indianna will free us both from her soon. She doesn’t deserve to be part of someone as pure and brave as you, Ayla. She truly doesn’t.”
Ayla steadied herself, breath trembling in and out, gathering every shard of will she had ever possessed. At last, she whispered, “There’s something else I need to tell you. Something I should have said long ago.”
But before she could, a thunderous crash echoed down the hall.
Ayla sprinted toward the sound, stopping only when her hands struck a door long sealed shut.
“Lenna? Is this you? Are you okay?” Ayla shouted as she knocked on Lenna’s door.
From inside came Jake’s ragged breath, and then his voice. “Sorry, the bed broke.”
Ayla frowned. Well, him being here was unexpected. The broken bed, not so much.
“I don’t care about furniture. Is Lenna okay?” she insisted.
“In the middle of deep-throating my cock while touching her wet pussy,” Jake said cheerfully. “I’d say she is better than okay. Lenna? Are you okay?”
Ayla covered her face with her palm. “You two didn’t just come to the safehouse and start fucking before saying hi to anyone, did you?”
“Since you ask for details, my wife and I are not technically fucking just yet,” Jake replied smoothly. “And—hi, Ayla. Better?”
“Your wife?!” Ayla gasped.
Raoul leaned in, whispering in her ear with a smirk she could feel. “See? They confessed and then married. Step one, step two. Easy.”
She longed for a solid kick to his ghostly groin.
From the room came Lenna’s muffled voice: “Hi sister. I have a very long and very hard task at hand. Care to talk after our post-ceremonial fuck?” Then blessed silence, no doubt sound-proofed with her power.
Ayla stayed rooted to the spot, emotions colliding.
Disappointment for not having finished talking to Nina now that she had found the ovaries Raoul had been mentioning so much, as if he owned a pair himself.
Frustration at him not shutting the fuck up for a minute, bored in his slumber-death he could only annoy and tease her. She had grown so accustomed to his voice and his presence that it was almost like having a brother, even if she would never, ever, admit that to him.
Happiness for Lenna somehow having regained Jake back, and for them to be—married? It was the most surreal shit she had heard of in a while.
And above it all, anticipation.
For the cure Indianna was about to find, that would save Nina, most importantly and urgently, and then herself as well. At this point, it was the only hope for a shield between Nina and the ink’s relentless spread.
And whatever the reasons for the succession of recent panomquakes were, stronger and more violent than ever before.
For the next, last step. Because if Lenna had returned with Jake, then the East piece of the Queen’s heart was already theirs.
Which meant that their last task was the most dangerous of all.
The final piece of heart.
The Cardinal Queen herself.